'Micro Men' is a telemovie
that chronicles the rise and decline of the British computer industry,
and the fierce rivalry
between Sir Clive Sinclair
(Alexander Armstrong) and Chris Curry (Tim Freeman) for domination of the
fledgling home
computing market. Clive
Sinclair was a prolific inventor, whose innovations include the pocket
calculator, the digital
quartz watch and the pocket
TV. The telemovie begins at Sinclair Radionics in 1978. The National Enterprise
Board
(which had bought a major
stake in the company after it experienced financial problems) cuts off
research funding for
Clive Sinclair's pet project,
the electric car. Sinclair sets up his own company, Science of Cambridge,
and convinces
an employee, Curry, to leave
Sinclair Radionics and work on similar projects at the new company.
Curry proposes to sell kits
that let people to make their own computer at home, but Sinclair sees no
market for this
product, and Curry leaves
to establish Acorn Computers with an Austrian business partner, Hermann
Hausser. Peter
Davison has a brief role
as a bank manager, whom Curry and Hausser approach for a series of business
loans - just
£10,000 to start with,
but £1m when Acorn grows very quickly. Sinclair also branches out
on his own and decides to
enter the home computer
market with a machine that is priced at just £99, the ZX80. Meanwhile,
Acorn and Sinclair
Research compete to gain
a lucrative contract to build a microcomputer for the BBC, which aims to
have one in every
school in the nation. 'Micro
Men' combines drama, humour and lots of nostalgia to provide an entertaining
90 minutes
for people who remember
the early days of home computers, or those who are too young to recall
the era but want to
see how far technology has
come in the last three decades. It was broadcast on BBC4 on 8 October 2009,
as part of
the Electric Revolution
season of programs that looked at different aspects of the IT industry.
Video
clip: The bank
manager 2.3mb |
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